sour grapes

We're well into the second week after the election and we here in "America's finest city" are still not sure who our next mayor is going to be. The 11th hour write-in candidacy of maverick San Diego City Councilwoman Donna Frye completely upset the apple carts of the two primary election winners...Mayor Dick Murphy and San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts...and tossed the whole election into a protracted manual vote count that continues as of this writing.

Roberts, trailing from the very first returns after his third run at seizing the Mayor's chair, never conceded but he did admit that the numbers weren't in his favor. Murphy, who was a reluctant candidate for re-election early on, has trailed behind the write-ins (though he continues to narrow the gap.) And Frye, the presumed
recipient of the vast majority of the write-in votes being reported, has proven suprisingly strong presence.

Part of Frye's apparent strength in the returns comes from the fact that gentlemen in the race are two sides of the same coin...old school, fairly moderate Republican politicians who, despite the fact that they tried desperately to differentiate themselves from each other, have an unsurprising meeting of minds on a lot of the issues of concern to local voters. Frye also benefited from the news coverage and free publicity that her last minute campaign drummed up. All of that...combined with an effective grassroots effort on the part of Frye's supporters and ...has led us to the current situation.

And, of course...considering our ever-litigious society...it has also led to bitching and moaning from the supporters of the candidates lagging in the vote count and the inevitable barrage of lawsuits challenging the validity of the election.

Before the election, none of these people found anything to be upset about because Frye's campaign was either doomed to failure (write-in campaigns are notoriously difficult things to pull off) or it was seen to perhaps be of benefit to the candidate they supported (the pundits predicted that Frye would pull in the anti-incumbent vote and thus give Roberts, who had a slight lead in the polls before Frye entered the race, a clear path to victory.)

Now that it looks like she has a chance of actually winning, suddenly "concerned citizens"...all, coincidentally I'm sure, disgruntled Republicans...are stepping up, lawsuits in their grubby little hands, to try to shut down the current vote count and to force an expensive new election featuring only Murphy and Roberts.

Whoever eventually prevails will have something less than a mandate...2/3 of people who voted in the original election will feel like their candidate will have gotten robbed...and the bitterness of the this campaign outcome will linger over their tenure in office like the aftertaste of a bitter wine culled from sour grapes.

And the losers...when all is said and done...will be the citizens of the city of San Diego...left with a Mayor who will come into office under a cloud of bitterness, suspicion, and acrimony.